Adding `branches' to VuXML

[Frankye - ML]

On Thu, 6 May 2004 11:18:53 -0500
"Jacques A. Vidrine" <nectar at FreeBSD.org> wrote:

| Robert Nagy of OpenBSD requested the addition of `branches' to
| VuXML.

[cut]

| So one possibility would be to add a <branch> child element:
| 
|   <!-- foo-1.1 and earlier on BRANCH_X and BRANCH_Y are
|        affected.  BRANCH_Z and others are not affected. --->
|   <package>
|     <branch>BRANCH_X</branch>
|     <branch>BRANCH_Y</branch>
|     <name>foo</name>
|     <range><le>foo-1.1</le></range>
|   <package>
| 
| The content model for <package> and <system> are the same.  I wonder if
| the optional presence of the <branch> child element for <system> will
| cause any confusion?  Right now, for issues that affect the FreeBSD base
| system, we just use version numbers without reference to the branch.
| e.g.
|       <system>
| 	<name>FreeBSD</name>
| 	<range><ge>5.0</ge><lt>5.2_6</lt></range>
| 	<range><ge>4.9</ge><lt>4.9_6</lt></range>
| 	<range><ge>4.0</ge><lt>4.8_19</lt></range>
|       </system>
| 
| Anyway ... comments?

Just a little idea.

Wouldn't be better to put <branch> into the <range> item? I understand
"branches" might not always be increasing numbers, so this might limit the
general usefulness of such an idea, but at least in openbsd are (iirc).

in the example above this would mean:

<package>
   <name>foo</name>
   <range>
      <branch><le>3.3</le></branch>
      <le>foo-1.1</le>
   </range>
<package>

It would not add much complexity (I hope it at least :) and we can use the
added flexibility provided by the various lt, ge, et al.

And now, since we're speaking of branches, here comes another silly idea
of mine: can we use the cvs tags instead of the versions (i.e.: RELENG_4
or RELENG_4_9) in <branch> items for the freebsd vuln.xml file?
This has no real practical reason whatsoever, but imvho for the historical
record is better-looking to say "-STABLE and 4.9-RELEASE were affected"
rather than "this version, which if you go looking for turns out to be the
-STABLE one, and this other ..."
(If this has a beneficial effect on the eventual confusion generated by
the <branch> item, remains to be seen, imho it has not)

Just my 2 cents

Frankye